Avoid Fee Reductions By Reporting Modifier 52 Properly If it has become a habit to append modifier 52 every time your medical billing has a service that doesn’t exactly meet a CPT code description, you could be unknowingly cutting your compensation on your submitted claims. AMA CPT guidelines state that modifier 52 should be used when the physician partially reduces or eliminates a service or procedure at his own discretion. The CMS guide lines state as follows: “when a procedure/service performed is significantly less than usually required”. What you should do is report the code as usual for the procedure and then append modifier 52 to show that the services …